fishydreamshttps://fishydreams.com
One fella´s take on fly fishing and other things......
Wed, 20 Mar 2019 18:52:49 +0000 en
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Telling storieshttps://fishydreams.com/2019/03/17/telling-stories/
https://fishydreams.com/2019/03/17/telling-stories/#respondSun, 17 Mar 2019 06:58:28 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6073Yesterday evening I found myself looking out over the Mediterranean from a viewing point at the end of a walking trail. I was with Paul Reddish. Beneath us was Marbella and cutting through the haze beyond the still waters of the sea were the tops of some of the mountains of Morocco. This is far from the narrowest part of the Mediterranean but, even from here, Africa looks pretty close. If you travel further west, at its narrowest point at the Strait of Gibraltar the distance shrinks to 8 miles or so and it can feel as though you could almost skim a stone and have it bounce across the water and rattle up among the pebbles of a different continent.

Paul and I were talking about various things and, seeing the Mediterranean from this vantage point, I remembered an experience I had a few years ago when I was lucky enough to sight a sperm whale in the straits when a bunch of us were out on a yacht looking at birds and cetaceans. We were able to approach the whale quite closely while it flushed out the carbon dioxide it had accumulated in the depths and tanked up on fresh oxygen before, with slow deliberation, assuming a vertical position and putting its great tail above the water before sounding once again. All this happened in slow motion and I remember those great tail flukes raised above the surface and dripping seawater before slipping beneath the surface as the whale headed to the sea floor 800 metres below.

For me, as you can imagine, this was an extraordinary experience and I well knew that I might never repeat it in my lifetime. But, only a little way into telling Paul this story I realised that I was speaking to someone whose life had been enriched by so many such experiences that what I was saying was already well understood and that the sense of awe and reverence, if that is not too showy a way of trying to express it, was something that he too had felt many times.

As it happens Paul had not only sighted sperm whales but had filmed them along with blue whales and humpbacks among many other marine mammals as part of a long career making wildlife films. I have a few stories of my own about my experiences with the natural world but if you want to really appreciate wonderful stories that are beautifully recounted then, quite frankly, Paul Reddish is the only show in town.

The two of us found ourselves at the end of this walking trail on the way back from the coast where Paul had been kind enough to give a presentation to a couple of hundred of our secondary students. The essential idea was to show the story writing component that underpins a wildlife film and how to create a kind of narrative thread to link and organise disparate ideas. To do this he asked the students what facts they had about hummingbirds and he wrote them down on a whiteboard. Then he discussed how the scaffolding of these facts could be used to develop the story which would run through the hummingbird film. And then, when the facts had been collected he showed excerpts from the award winning film that he had produced showing how this had been achieved. Essentially the students were tasked with carrying out, in about an hour, the steps that are taken in making a real wildlife production. Later we were treated to short sequences from the final programme.

The actual hummingbird film that Paul had produced, which was around 3 years in the making, was narrated by David Attenborough with whom Paul had collaborated on many such projects over the years. As you might expect, it was visually stunning, but the storytelling and writing were the aspects which were fascinating and Paul and I have had a chance to talk about this in some depth.

So what is the humming bird “story”? I cannot do it full justice here of course but a central idea, THE central idea of Biology as Paul will remind you, is evolution and the intimate connection between the evolution of flowers and of the hummingbirds themselves. Both the flowering plants and the hummingbirds exploit and are exploited in a sense by the other. The flowers provide the rocket fuel for these miniature combustion engines and the birds deliver pollen with greater efficiency than the insect pollinators that had been the first on the job. Ultimately the mutual interdependence between the birds and the flowers has determined not only the adaptive radiation of the hummingbirds themselves but also the evolution of the flowering plants whose flowers have evolved to provide easy access to their preferred pollinators.

This presentation was about hummingbirds but Paul´s filming experiences are very diverse but in natural history and anthropology. The stories that he has hold these films together and, like I say, when it comes to story telling he is the only show in town.

Here we are after Paul´s talk on wildlife film making. Shortly after this photo was taken we had a picture taken with the audience on the steps outside the venue and then, of course, it was time for a couple of glasses of wine!

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2019/03/17/telling-stories/feed/0fishydreamsScreen Shot 2019-03-17 at 07.52.40The Fish of Loch Lomondhttps://fishydreams.com/2019/03/03/the-fish-of-lough-lomond/
https://fishydreams.com/2019/03/03/the-fish-of-lough-lomond/#respondSun, 03 Mar 2019 21:23:23 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6068I´m no expert on the fish of Loch Lomond but I am more of an expert than I was this time last week after having made a trip up to the Loch and to stare, for the first time, into its dark, peat-stained water.

When God was shaping the heavens and the earth he flattened some of Scotland to give us the lowlands and he rest, which was a bit bumpier, became the highlands. And, of course he gauged out deep crevices, some of which filled up with water, and he made lots of islands and stuff. This is all pretty impressive in itself, but what I had not realised is that God had the divine foresight to put the south shore of Lough Lomond close enough to Glasgow that you can get there by train in half an hour.

My daughter Pippa is studying at the University of Glasgow and Catriona and I popped over to see her last week. On Tuesday all three of us hopped on the train and headed off to Balloch which is the end of the line and only a stone´s throw from where you can hop on a cruise ship (maybe ship is stretching things a bit) that will take you up to the south shore of the loch.

Lomond, the queen of Scottish lochs, has earned its place in folklore, in literature, and of course in song. “I´ll take the high road and you take the low road” provide an alternative should you and I not simply want to hop on the train, as we did last week, from Glasgow Queen Street.

So what about the fish? There are 21 species swimming around in there. The most interesting might well be the powan, Coregonus clupeoides a whitefish which is endemic to only two lakes in Scotland, Lomond and Esk. The only other fish mentioned on our little cruise were salmon and sea trout but, of course, the lough is famous for its pike. I remember reading the late Fred Buller´s accounts of the pike fishing there. There are pike all over the British Isles but they reckon if you want to have a crack at a really big girl (the really big pike are females) you should think about Lomond. For this reason Lomond became the destination of choice for pike fishermen with the shared dream (obsession more accurately) of landing a real whopper. From memory, Buller hooked and lost a leviathan there and somebody who caught a glimpse of the thing and said it was all of four feet long, maybe more. I reckon that that fish is the last thing he thought about at night and the memory of the parting knot must have haunted for the rest of his long life. There have been, in recent times, three 40 pounders taken from the loch and so it seems its reputation is well deserved. My advice, for what it´s worth is that if it´s a real monster you´re after you should consider going to Loch Ness!

What else? Of interest to anglers, there are big perch (a 4 pound 4 ounce perch was caught in 2015), and big roach (a 2 pound 12 ounce fish in 2016). There are also massive shoals of bream.

It´s getting late now and I have a glass of white wine looking at me so I will just cut to the chase by providing a list of all the species of Loch Lomond just in case you are curious. I stole it from the Loch Lomond Fisheries Trust http://www.llft.org/fish-species/ and reproduce it without any further ado:

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2019/03/03/the-fish-of-lough-lomond/feed/0fishydreamsScreen Shot 2019-03-03 at 21.17.30Leo wins the Leaguehttps://fishydreams.com/2019/03/02/leo-wins-the-league/
https://fishydreams.com/2019/03/02/leo-wins-the-league/#commentsSat, 02 Mar 2019 19:53:24 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6060My son Leo plays rugby and he just sent us a message to say that his team, Whitton Lions RFC, had won the league. This was his first season of rugby and he has obviously taken to it! Being in Spain while Leo plays in London I have not been able to see his weekly matches but last weekend I had a chance to get over there and arrived early enough to make the Saturday game.

He plays number 7 which is openside flanker and I was amused to see that he was one of two number 7s on the field last week. Of course there should only be one but I guess there were a couple of jerseys with the same number and it seems both flankers grabbed one! There is one advantage to having someone else with your jersey number – if the ref spots you infringing or you give away a penalty you can always later claim it was the other guy!

This blog is the nearest thing I have to a diary and so I apologise if I am wandering off the the beaten track a little with this post. Thinking about it, it may come as a relief from the tedium of me blathering on about another fishing trip to the river! And so, without further apology, and for entirely personal reasons I want to commemorate Leo´s achievement and to say that rugby is just one of many ways that Leo has made me and Catriona proud.

He was particularly pleased of a cut he got today around his eye which an opponent had graciously gifted him. Rugby is like that – there is such a spirit of giving! He said that blood was just pouring out of it. I hope he just told me this because it is the last thing he should be pointing out to his mother! I have since been reassured that there is no lasting damage.

Rugby goes back in our family history. My Dad played as hooker and captained his school, Roscrea College. Rugby was at that time frowned on by the GAA (the organisation that runs gaelic football and hurley in Ireland) as it smacked of elitism and was associated with the British. My Dad played both rugby and gaelic football but had to keep pretty quiet about his involvement in rugby or the GAA would have banned him from gaelic football.

Then, a generation later, it was my turn. I enjoyed playing but was certainly not as good a player as either my father had been or as Leo is now. My brother Sean played too. He is taller than me and was a great jumper in his day and so he excelled in the lineout, as Leo does now. Sean and Mark McCann are close fishing buddies and veterans of many campaigns but, before we developed our shared affinity for fly fishing and before the arrival of wives and children, Sean and Mark made up the second row partnership of my school team.

Rugby, like fishing, creates a thread that can link us together. Leo never really knew his grandfather on my side of the family as my Dad died when Leo was very little. When I saw Leo play last week it occurred to me that, if time was taken out of the equation, and we could prepare a team with each of us in our prime, we could build a team with players whose lives span three generations. My Dad would pack down, as he always did in the middle of the front row, Sean would be behind him in the second row, and Leo in the back row. I don´t know where I would fit into this imaginary team, or frankly, if I would make the selection. If I could play anywhere I would opt for scrum half. That way I could get to call a lineouts. Dad would throw from the touchline and the recipient could be, according to the call, one of our two jumpers, Leo and Sean.

I´m back in Spain now and so unfortunately I just missed the weekend when the Lions won the league. Never mind, I have a beer here to celebrate and imagine that, over in London, Leo does too.

League Champions!

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2019/03/02/leo-wins-the-league/feed/4fishydreamsScreen Shot 2019-03-02 at 19.32.36Showing how its donehttps://fishydreams.com/2019/02/17/showing-how-its-done/
https://fishydreams.com/2019/02/17/showing-how-its-done/#respondSun, 17 Feb 2019 20:13:33 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6055I got no change out of the fish yesterday evening when I tried to sucker them into ingesting a little nymph and so the gypsy barbel of the Guadalhorce enjoyed a relaxed, uneventful evening. To be honest I should have had one when I lifted into a dip of my yarn indicator but without any real conviction. I thought I had snagged on the bottom and, by the time I realised that the bottom had drifted across the river a couple of metres, everything went slack again and the fish was gone. It may have been true that those fish were not disturbed yesterday evening but this is not true of the preceding hours. One of those gypsy barbel had been plucked from the river by an osprey and the event had been witnessed by a couple of guys I came across on the river.

These were pretty serious bird watchers, these fellas, and they had a great interest in the wildlife of the river. They approached me and we exchanged observations. The picture they showed me was clear enough for me to confirm to them the identity of the bird´s catch. It was a good fish too and it was impressive that the osprey should be able to fly off with a fish that must have been very close to its own weight.

They showed me two photographs, one of the bird in flight with the barbel and another of the bird on an electricity pylon with the fish at its feet. They were kind enough to agree to send me a copy of both photographs.

I had seen the osprey myself fleetingly when I arrived at the river and remember having seen it in the same stretch of river in the past. This afternoon, when I really ought to have been working, I slipped off to the same stretch of river to see if the osprey was still around. Unfortunately there were people there and I think the bird might have decided to give them a wide berth. It was only when I returned to the car that I saw the silhouette of what I suspect was the osprey but the failing light and distance between us conspired against me and so I cannot say for sure.

I managed a couple of nice fish this evening and but I had to work hard for them. My fishing ability is clearly eclipsed by that of the osprey that can swoop from the sky and, in a matter of a second or two is again airborne with its catch held in its talons. Hats off to the real fisherman!

Unfortunately this image is not as sharp as the original shown to me at the river.

This was the first of a couple of barbel I had this evening. I have not had many this year and this is the best I have had yet.

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2019/02/17/showing-how-its-done/feed/0fishydreamsScreen Shot 2019-02-17 at 20.54.32Screen Shot 2019-02-17 at 20.56.46Screen Shot 2019-02-17 at 20.40.44A skinny birdhttps://fishydreams.com/2019/01/28/a-skinny-bird/
https://fishydreams.com/2019/01/28/a-skinny-bird/#commentsMon, 28 Jan 2019 20:29:50 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6050It looks like a great white egret (Ardea alba) has made a home for itself in my local stretch of the Río Grande. This is a really strikingly beautiful bird and a bit of a rarity around these parts. My “Birds of Iberia” just lumps it with the miscellaneous “other birds” that are thrown in a loose pile between the main text and the index. It has nothing at all to say about it beyond describing it dismissively as an “accidental.” If my encounter with it was similarly described as accidental I would have to say it was a very happy accident!

The great white egret is a odd-looking bird. It is as skinny as hell (it looks like a bird trying to mimic a giraffe) and it is as white as snow. Despite their impressive stature they are very lightweight and I was surprised to find that their average weight is about a kilo which is similar to the weight of an average gypsy barbel of the same river. Like other herons, they are stealthy hunters and spear their prey with a dagger-like beak. Like other herons too, they often stand very still for a long time to allow their dinner to get within striking distance.

On the exposed shallows of the river a bird like this can be spotted from a mile. It towers above the little egret which is the only other bird it is likely to be confused with (I was fortunate to have had both birds obligingly stand close to one another to make the comparison possible).

I was pretty excited when I first saw it about ten days ago and it was obliging enough to allow me to drive reasonably close and get a good view. I got on to Harry Abbott later that evening to confirm the identity. Harry is a fishing buddy of mine and used to lead bird watching trips a few years back when he lived in Andalucía, and so I knew he would be a good one to ask. I probably caught Harry at a bad time because he was in the boozer with his chums after galloping around for a few hours on a horse. No doubt after all that fresh air and a few celebratory drinks he might have been feeling a bit light-headed but, being the pro that he is, he left his drink on the table long enough to fire off a few questions to help establish the identity of the mysterious bird.

Funnily enough a gentleman who I only know of through his initials, and who recently got in touch via the blog, also reported seeing a pair of great white egrets, among the usual avian suspects, on the Río Grande. This was within a few days of my own encounter. I hope that we might have a chance to visit the river together soon to see what other interesting things we can spot.

I returned to the river on Saturday to see if the bird was still there and to see if I could maybe manage a photograph. He (or she, for they cannot be distinguished outside of the breeding season) was indeed standing on a shingle bank close to the motorway bridge where we had our previous rendezvous. Like the little egret beside him, he decided to take to the air and both birds flew a little way upstream. It´s not easy to disappear when you are over three feet tall and you look as though you have been whitewashed, and so I was able to drive upstream within a couple of minutes to take another look at him.

Even though this species is rarely encountered here in Spain it is globally quite common and four very similar looking sub-species exist in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Southern Europe. The southern European stronghold seems to be further east in Italy and Greece and beyond.

Interestingly, the American population suffered a decline when there was a demand for their feathers for hats and in 1953 the great white egret in flight became the symbol of the National Audubon Society that was set up to help protect birds from various threats, including killing birds for their feathers!

This was as good a photograph as I could manage.

This lovely photograph of a great white egret shows the distinctive way the herons and bitterns fold their necks during flight. Like all egrets it is a member of the heron family. This photo was pilfered from the internet and I cannot give credit because I forget where I found it!

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2019/01/28/a-skinny-bird/feed/6fishydreamsscreen shot 2019-01-28 at 20.58.37screen shot 2019-01-28 at 18.42.39Three´s a crowdhttps://fishydreams.com/2019/01/20/threes-a-crowd/
https://fishydreams.com/2019/01/20/threes-a-crowd/#commentsSun, 20 Jan 2019 19:36:14 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6047One of the one hundred and twelve thousand reasons I go fishing is that I manage to grab a bit of solitude when I´m out there creeping along the river bank. In truth I would normally expect to have the river completely to myself but for the usual suspects who tend to hang out there – the egrets and herons and and all the the bugs and weeds and shrubs and fishes.

Every now and then I bump into another fly fisherman on the river but it doesn´t happen very often. Yesterday, though ,two of them showed up. Ironically, it was the prospect of solitude that was my primary motivation for this particular hydrotherapy treatment and I selected the goat pool on the Río Grande because the weather yesterday had not been particularly nice and I figured that the locals, who hang out along the banks during the weekends, were likely to have had second thoughts. After all, in the early afternoon it had been raining and that was surely enough to put the weekend visitors off. I figured that the fish were unlikely to have been too bothered by that rain. They were unlikely, after all, to get any wetter than they already were.

The best way to fish the goat pool on the Río Grande, in my opinion, is to work it upstream from the side opposite the big rock and the goat farm. It pays to stay well off the river and to do everything in slow motion. The pool is not all that big and, even taking things slowly, you are likely to have covered it fairly quickly. The fish usually lie in the shallows but they can spook very easily. The sweet spot is where the shallows at the head give way to the deeps and so I put a little nymph through this water under a yarn indicator and hoped for the best.

It was when I was doing this that I became aware of another fly fisherman and the opposite side of the river. This side is more elevated and offers a good chance to see if any fish are around but I have found that it is difficult to catch from this side. The fly fisherman was talking away to his buddy and soon made his way down to the river some 20 metres or so upstream of me. Both of these guys were Spanish and were obviously good fishing buddies.

I must admit I felt a little self conscious casting away in close proximity to the newcomers and, to be honest, I felt a little bit encroached upon. But then as I cast away and let my nymph drift over the sweet spot I realised that the Spanish probably have a different take on all of this than I do.

I have lived in Andalucía for close to 20 years and I have the highest regards for the people here. They are outgoing, friendly, welcoming and social. We have often noticed that, unlike us northern Europeans, who will walk miles for a private stretch of beach, Spaniards will all settle within yards of each other as though they were a colony of penguins.

The two guys upstream of me may seem to have been muscling in on “my” water but maybe that´s because I have a northern European take on things. I think that they were simply approaching the business of fly fishing with the same gregarious way that they approach life in general.

Anyway, because my movement upstream was essentially blocked by the new arrivals I just fished the nymph through the sweet spot one cast after another and was soon into a fish. It was the first I landed this year which would have made it, whatever its eventual size, the biggest fish of the year so far (and the smallest!).

It was in fact a standard-issue Río Grande gypsy barbel of about a kilo and I soon beached it on a sill of mud before slipping out the barbless hook and letting it go. I had been hoping for a picture but it was so muddy that it needed a good rinse and while this was happening the fish thought that it had had enough inconvenience for one day, gave a couple of good heaves of his tail, and sailed away.

Having seen the fish return to the river and realising that there was really nowhere much for me to go I tipped my hat at my new companions and slipped away myself.

The fish I caught didn´t stick around long enough to have its photo taken but here is a picture of the river a short distance downstream.

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2019/01/20/threes-a-crowd/feed/8fishydreamsscreen shot 2019-01-20 at 20.29.01Close but no cigarhttps://fishydreams.com/2019/01/13/close-but-no-cigar/
https://fishydreams.com/2019/01/13/close-but-no-cigar/#commentsSun, 13 Jan 2019 20:14:40 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6044For whatever reason plans seem to go in alphabetic order. You might give Plan A a whirl and if there is no mileage in it, then it´s time for Plan B. This evening on the river I got as far as Plan C.

Plan A was a dumb choice. The fish, wherever they were hiding, would probably have had a good laugh if they thought that I should be dim-witted enough to even think of it. They had had a relatively stressful day, those fish, or at least those in “my” stretch of the Río Grande. This is because today is Sunday and it was sunny too and the problem with a nice Sunday afternoon is that everyone and their dog decides that the river bank would be a nice place to hang out.

That first dumb plan of mine was to fish a stretch of river that had probably had dogs jumping around in it all day and folks stomping up and down the river banks. You don´t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that the fish in that shallow clear section of river, neurotic at the best of times, would have been reduced to nervous wrecks and, sure enough, despite pretty careful stalking there was not one to be seen.

Plan B was to take a 10 minute walk downstream and see if I could spot a fish or two cruising in a pool down on the Guadalhorce where Leo and I saw a few fish here when we fished on Christmas Eve. This is further off the beaten track and so the fish were likely to have remained undisturbed. Unfortunately it´s tricky to spot them here without breaking the skyline. I approached as cautiously as I could but there was not a fish to be seen.

The day´s sunshine was on the wane as I walking from the Grande to the Guadalhorce (and from Plan A to Plan B). I was not feeling overly optimistic about catching a barbel in conditions which were going to make spotting them more difficult and so I took the opportunity, when presented with it, to take a photograph of a horse. I figured that in this line of work you should just take advantage of whatever opportunities come your way.

Plan B didn´t turn out to be much of an improvement on Plan A and so, after failing to spot anything at all, this plan, just like its predecessor, was duly abandoned. As conditions for spotting fish became more difficult I decided that Plan C would be to fish blind under an indicator and work the water where the shallows gave way to relatively deep water. I did not see a fish all evening but the indicator dipped a few times and put my very briefly in touch with two fish, one within a couple of minutes of the other. Unfortunately neither of those fish stayed on for more than a few seconds and, as I left the river in the failing light, I realised that I had been skunked on my very first fishing day of the new year.

I can´t say I was disappointed. At this time of year nothing can be taken for granted and I was pleased that I managed to hook a couple of fish on an evening when it seemed I would have my work cut out for me.

Close but no cigar!

At least I have that picture of a horse!

Here it is!

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2019/01/13/close-but-no-cigar/feed/2fishydreamsscreen shot 2019-01-13 at 20.48.09So much for Santahttps://fishydreams.com/2018/12/27/so-much-for-santa/
https://fishydreams.com/2018/12/27/so-much-for-santa/#commentsThu, 27 Dec 2018 12:07:56 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6040I fished on Christmas Eve with my son Leo and Johan Terblanche and, as we headed out to the river, I was quietly optimistic about our prospects. I had made an exploratory visit a couple of days before and had managed to extract a gypsy barbel from the Río Grande and the river looked good. It was running clear and there were a few fish around.

Santa is supposed to grant wishes at this time of year and I was hoping he would look favourably on our little outing. But things didn´t pan out that way and it didn´t seem like the fat bastard was in any kind of a giving mood, or not at least if gifts you are hoping for come wrapped up in scales.

To be fair, we each had our chance and, at some stage, all three of us were connected, albeit briefly, to a fish but none of those fish stayed on. As we were trekking back through the citrus groves to the parked cars after fishing the Guadalhorce we reflected on how fine the margins are in this game are, particularly at this time of the year. If momentary contacts had led to solid hook ups we might have had three or four fish between us. In the event we had none. But such is life and, as fishermen, we accept this with equanimity because we recognise simply that this is the nature of things. The general consensus was that, fish or no fish, it had been a very fine day spent in fine company.

We fished the Río Grande in the late morning and early afternoon and the Guadlahorce later in the afternoon. On the journey between the first river and the second we made a pit stop and enjoyed a respectable selection of tapas in Café Europa. There is an African Grey parrot in a cage there and he is often good for a word or two but on Monday he was curiously silent. A guy sitting at the bar saw me looking at the parrot and he told me that the parrot was tired. Maybe he was.

This is likely to be my last post of the year, so many thanks to all who have followed the blog. Many thanks too for the comments you send in which I always enjoy reading.

I hope you enjoy what remains of this year and I wish you all the very best for 2019.

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2018/12/27/so-much-for-santa/feed/7fishydreamsHa ha ha ha …….. or maybe nothttps://fishydreams.com/2018/12/14/ha-ha-ha-ha-or-maybe-not/
https://fishydreams.com/2018/12/14/ha-ha-ha-ha-or-maybe-not/#commentsFri, 14 Dec 2018 18:44:16 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6037For a few years I have been dabbling in stand up comedy and have performed a few bits and pieces in various staff and PTA shows. People have been kind enough to suggest I might have a bit of a knack for this kind of thing and so I thought I might step up to the plate and try to do a bit of stand up in the “real world”. So I managed to enlist myself as one of three warm up acts before three headline professional UK comedians who are touring the coast. This all took place last Saturday night in a nightclub in Benavista during their inaugural comedy night.

What a dumb idea that was!

I was second in the running order. First up was some young buck who seemed, to me at least, to have a pretty neanderthal take on humour. I don´t mean to take a potshot at this guy because, frankly, the audience liked him much more than they did me! His repertoire relied heavily on an assumption that the audience would find only allusions to sex to be remotely entertaining. Whatever it happened to be, whether he was buying vegetables in the supermarket, or visiting the dentist, there was some way he was going to connect any experience he had to some kind of reproductive behaviour in a member of the animal kingdom. He told us about the terrapins he saw in his local pet shop engaged in some kind of “orgy” and managed to squeeze in rhinos humping each other (in the bit about his visit to the dentist!). The humping rhinos were even mimed to universal approval. To me this all sounded like the kind of thing that might have made me giggle when I was 11 but the audience, to my horror, lapped this stuff up.

And so then the lady with the microphone thanks him, everyone applauds, and the young buck sits down to plenty of back slapping from his mates and a bunch of free pints.

And then it was me…….

It didn´t take long for me to realise was that I was out of my depth. I had been hoping to rely on skilful storytelling, my native with and charm, and a quirky take on this and that. The audience was having none of it. They wanted humping rhinos and I didn´t have any ! To be fair, the folks were respectful enough. There was no hurling of rotten fruit but, on reflection, that was probably only because there was no rotting fruit to hand.

When I walked, or rather ran, off the stage at the end of my routine, I realised I had not been ready for an audience like that. The reception for my material was lukewarm at best. In fact, it was pretty cold. There was no getting away from it – I had flopped.

And so I experienced what every comic has had the misfortune to experience, a kind of public humiliation, before exiting the stage at the speed of light looking for a large rock to crawl under. I had the good fortune of having a few friends with me and, like the good friends that they are, they were pretty consoling. They were even kind enough to say that I did pretty well, but that certainly was not the impression I got.

So how do I feel about the whole experience? Actually, pretty good! I realise that I can choose to remain beneath the rock I crawled under and never resurface, or I can learn from it. But, while I must admit that the evening took the wind out of my sails, I realise that I got what I deserved. None of this is the audience´s fault. They were actually very nice people, many of them Dutch. The truth is that one audience will not necessarily respond like another and we were not on the same wavelength at all. Plainly, I lacked the versatility to adapt.

Now that I have had a chance to think things over I can see how humour works, or at least one kind of humour. Human beings have probably been laughing a bodily functions more than anything else since we first developed a sense of humour back in the days when we were running around chasing mammoths. And even now a well conceived joke or meandering anecdote can never hope to deliver the level of hilarity that accompanies hearing a loud fart in church when everyone is supposed to be engaged in silent prayer. None of this may reflect particularly well on us but I think we are just wired that way.

So all in all I am not too discouraged. I´m not the worst writer around and nor am I the worst comic in the world. I just need to develop a bit more versatility and a little more courage. And so it is back to the drawing board for me.

I wonder what other humping animals are there that have not been joked about?

Obviously rhinos and terrapins have been taken……..

ha ha ha ha ha !!!!!!!!

]]>https://fishydreams.com/2018/12/14/ha-ha-ha-ha-or-maybe-not/feed/3fishydreamsScreen Shot 2018-12-14 at 18.56.55Peregrin Falconhttps://fishydreams.com/2018/12/08/peregrin-falcon/
https://fishydreams.com/2018/12/08/peregrin-falcon/#respondSat, 08 Dec 2018 11:36:15 +0000http://fishydreams.com/?p=6034I´m a pretty crap bird watcher if I am to be completely honest. I did try some years back to record in that back of diary I was given at work to faithfully list the species I came across here in Spain. The list ran to more than 40 species when the diary disappeared and I became distracted by other things. No doubt it will resurface one day.

I suffered a little setback in my ornithological career when my binoculars fell down into the water while I was fishing from a float tube and, though not lost, everything looks as though it is being seen through dense fog.

Today I decided I would try to put things right. My wife asked what I wanted for Christmas and it seemed that a compact pair of binoculars would be great. They would have to be waterproof of course! By one of those strange coincidences, it was only minutes after discussing my plans to be a more active bird watcher and while rustling up a bite to eat in the kitchen, that I became aware of a bird perched on a high post beside the house of our closest neighbour. It looked like a peregrine falcon to me and then it did what peregrines do best – it just folder its wings and dropped like a stone before levelling out somewhere below my vision.

A little while later it landed on our own fence perhaps 15 yards from the kitchen and Catriona came in to join me to take a look. After a few moments it took to the air and flew towards us and landed on the roof of the house above the kitchen.

Spain is a European stronghold for peregrines and I was pretty confident I had seen peregrines before when out walking the dogs but I had never before today had such a close view. What a beautiful bird it is.

The peregrine´s main claim to fame is that it is said to be the fastest bird in the world with a speed of 240 mph having been recorded when the bird is diving. Personally, I have never been too happy about this statistic, impressive though it is, because of the acceleration due to free fall. A tortoise could probably clock up a pretty respectable speed it you pushed it over the edge of a cliff!

So now I have a new “cuaderno de campo” having become a member of SEO Birdlife into which I can once again list the birds I come across. My first entry is already written: